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From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Lunatic orthography (was Re: Esperanto as a stepping stone?
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References: <3ergbm$g14@condor.cs.jhu.edu> <D27vLM.vy@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> <3f0rfh$7rb@condor.cs.jhu.edu> <henryD294pL.DJp@netcom.com>
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 1995 19:32:33 GMT
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In article <henryD294pL.DJp@netcom.com>, Henry Polard <henry@netcom.com> wrote:
>For languages in which a morpheme can have more than
>one phonemic realization, would it make sense to have an
>alphabetic writing system that represents each morpheme with the same symbols,
>regardless of how they are realized phonemically (except for
>suppletive morphemes, such as go/went)?  
>
>In a "phonemic" system, it is easy to determine pronunciation, but
>morphemes might be hard to recognize.
>
>In a "morphemic" system, the morphemes are easy to recognize, but
>it is difficult to determine pronunciation. [...]
>
>I thought that the Shaw Alphabet (a phonemic writing system with
>letters that are written with one stroke each) was a great
>idea, then I tried to read it.  The problem was not recognizing the
>letters, but having to say out loud what I was reading (which I
>don't do normally) in order to understand it.
>
>Are there any experts in writing systems who can comment on this?

Geoffrey Sampson in his excellent _Writing Systems_ makes a similar
distinction (which he calls "shallow" vs. "deep") to your "phonemic"
vs. "morphemic".  He and other linguists (notably Chomsky and Halle)
have, like you, defended the notion of consistent spelling of morphemes
despite differences in pronunciation.

On Shaw's alphabet, I wonder if you gave it a fair trial; it takes
quite a while to get used to a new alphabet.  Learning Russian, I noticed
that I could easily recognize words I already knew, while I had to 
sound out unfamiliar words, months after learning the alphabet.

I'd criticize the Shavian alphabet, however, for the excessive similarity
of the letterforms.  An effective writing system should probably have 
letters as distinct as possible from each other, *especially* similar-
sounding letters.  b and d are notorious problems in our alphabet;
probably nobody confuses d and t.  Sampson talks about this as well
(singling out the classical Hebrew alphabet for particular criticism).
